Thursday, 1 July 2010

The majority of Torontonians believe police actions against G20 protesters were justified, according to a new poll.

The Angus Reid poll, which surveyed 1,003 Canadians and 503 Torontonians, found that 73 per cent of Torontonians and two-thirds of Canadians believe police treatment of protesters was justified during the G20 summit.

It's true. We get the fucking government we deserve.

ADDED: There's something wrong with Blogger. I just approved 3 comments -- from Brian, Kateland, and Chet -- and they disappeared. Grrrrrr. They were good too. Hopeful, even.

OY: So, Chet's and Kateland's show up. Brian is still missing and one I just approved from Dave doesn't appear. I'm beginning to get a little paranoid.

I GIVE UP: Comments seem to be taking a side trip to Huntsville before appearing.

15 comments:

This is completely anecdotal but I work in the downtown, in a completely conservative financial environment, and summit hoopla has been the small talk simply every where since Monday.

Sure, there has been condemnation of the BB tactics and actions, a lack of sympathy for most protesters in general, but no one is very well happy with the lack of police response to Saturday and its been one of overwhelming outrage as more information surfaced on the arbitrary arrests and detentions by the police on Sunday.

Remember, a great deal didn't of the shiftiness of the Police conduct didn't come out till late Tuesday/Wednesday while the poll was taken Monday/Tuesday.

As for the rest of Canada, I think its a case of not understanding the geography of downtown or understanding that most the police 'action' didn't take place in front of the 'security zone'.

Of course, the 'police' conduct question is rather general and somewhat shifty. If AR had asked 'were the police justified in violating most innocent citizens charter rights' - it might have come out differently.

Actually, that's a fairly predictable result. Most Torontonians did not go downtown last weekend and the other Canadians polled definitely didn't. Thus, what they know about the events during the G20 is what they were fed by CTV and Global - images of burning police cars, people breaking windows, etc. There are no news reports of people singing O' Canada and then being charged by police for doing so. Most Canadians don't read political blogs - and frankly, I don't blame them. We're pretty frigging depressing at times and the outrage can become a thin gruel.

FWIW, take a look at other figures. A huge majority of Torontonians and Canadians generally think it was a mistake to hold the G20 in T.O.

Look at that margin of error! Wow, a lot of people refused the opportunity to answer.

Many people do not understand that the spat of violence and the various protests are not connected. This is why the Black Bloc was not cracked down on by police: it was a *planned* pretest that allowed the use of force against all the protests.

We are currently engaged in an infowar of social media vs. government messaging.

Sickening. It shows how far to the right our media has become. Even the CBC dominated their coverage on Saturday on the 'thugs' - they became 'the protesters' and the talking heads did a miserable job of differentiating between the two. Canadians witnessed cars on fire and windows being bashed for hours and very little of the peaceful part has been shown. When CBC finally showed the O Canada vid days later, they cut off the end where the police beat the sitting protesters. So it goes in the media across the boards. Only if one was paying attention, could one see through the media's servitude to authority. But it was the weekend and Canadians were doing other things than being glued to the teevee. It was our conservative media who did the government's bidding by synopsizing the weekend in terms Harper so carefully arranged.

The MSM have done a real disservice; I didn't watch Global but CFTO/CTV were a disgrace with the way the covered the Blair's mendacity; they didn't say a word about Blair's lying about the 5-metre rule at all on their 6 pm newscast Tuesday when it would've been seen by most of their audience, have never run any private videos showing the police attacking (including the "O Canada" incident, which I saw broadcast - the shorter 31 second version - on TVO and CBC Newsworld), and are using the BB "rampage" and burning cruisers in their fucking promos! If that isn't corporatist propaganda BS I don't know what is! But I guess it's to be expected since CTV is Harper's farm team for his rubber-stamp Senate; you can practically see Steve-O's shitstains on Lloyd Robertson's and Robert Fife's lips each night...

When something like this happened in Ottawa in November 1991, there was a subsequent "Citizens' Panel" organized by some local lumibaries because our then-Mayor Bob Chiarelli refused to investigate police abuses (including the beating of CBC reporter Evan Dyer).

There were some 70-odd submissions. Some praised the police. These were--invariably--from people who had not actually witnessed the protest and the police response.

We're conditioned to believe that the police are on "our side." I suspect that, as the use of social media grows and becomes commonplace, this may change. I wouldn't be too disheartened by this poll.

Lyn, if you can't see the threat that this poses to a relatively open society we have - for now - then you have no idea what democracy is or what civil rights are. Go back to your mindless video games where you can PRETEND to be heroic; unlike those who actually stood up for things they believe in and took a beating or got arrested for it. Witless twerp.